


In the Company of Soldiers

by Redcoat_Officer



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Gen, Mercenaries, Military, Red Gauntlet, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:33:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25000189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redcoat_Officer/pseuds/Redcoat_Officer
Summary: From the Baltic sea to the Balkan peninsula, from the Carpathian mountains to the Mongolian steppes, the fate of entire nations depends on the favour of the Army without a State. Red Gauntlet, once the pride of Russia's Parahumans, broke away from Moscow's control to forge their own path, a path that frees the soldier from the control of the politician.Noosphere serves the Red Gauntlet as a junior officer, the Captain of a company of soldiers who serve to enhance and support her powers. She finds herself on her first foreign deployment, forced to confront the realities of a shifting political situation as she is buffeted about by forces beyond her control.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	In the Company of Soldiers

A pothole jolts me awake, the sudden shock causing my eyes to dart around in a panic, before reality reasserts itself.

“You okay, ma’am?”

Ledovskoy isn’t looking at me. His eyes are on a waterproof map, one he’s annotating with a ballpoint pen and a yellow highlighter. He’s looking over the terrain, going solely off the contour lines. He grumbles that it’s too easy this way, with everything mapped out in advance by satellites, but deep down he appreciates that it makes his work easier.

“I’m fine, Staff Sergeant. Just dozed off for a while. Where are we?”

I already know, of course, but small things like this help to pass the time, now that sleep is no longer an option.

“Four miles outside the city. Shouldn’t be long now.”

I nod, before leaning back against the steel hull. It’s raining, and the BMP has been sealed tight against the elements. It’s almost spacious in here, with only three other people and the three crewmen to keep me company. I can see eleven other vehicles stretched out behind us and the men in those vehicles are backed together like sardines, swaying into each other’s shoulders as the convoy scrambles over the pockmarked road and around craters left over from the last round of shelling.

My Company. My pride and joy. One hundred and five men, and I am mother to them all. I know each of them. I know their fears and desires, their secrets and petty nicknames. I know their skills, too. Very few of my mine were raw recruits before joining my Company; few ever are, in companies such as this. Each of them brought knowledge from their last platoons, their last campaigns. Even the least of them – those who’ve spent their career up to now without ever going on deployments – has brought the thousand minor skills that people learn as a natural part of life.

There’s a checkpoint up ahead. I can see it clearly through the portholes of the commander’s cupola. Six men, dressed in mismatched camouflage and civilian clothing and carrying AK-74s left over from the last war. The barricade is a simple thing – a pair of school buses pushed out into the middle of the road, and there’s a flag hanging from the windows of the foremost bus. Three horizontal stripes, in red blue and white, with a crest in the centre.

“Checkpoint up ahead, Ma’am. Local militia,” Stepankov warns me. He’s an experienced vehicle commander, but he’s new to the unit. That is why he drives my personal vehicle; so that I can keep a closer eye on him.

“Then pull up. I suppose we should at least _pretend_ to cooperate with them.”

I reach into my pocket, pulling out a pack of cigarettes. Unprompted, Ledovskoy hols his lighter to the tip, and I take a deep draft before putting the pack back in my pocket. I would offer one to Ledovskoy, but he doesn’t want any. The vehicle comes to a stop, and I pull the hood of my smock up over my green beret to protect my face – and the cigarette – from the rain I can see pouring down outside. The rear hatch drops, and I step out into the driving rain, followed by Ledovskoy and my two guards. I sling my rifle over my shoulder as I walk along the side of the BMP, but the rest of my group keeps their weapons up, ready to fire at a moment’s notice. I pass the turret, and I know with all certainty that the gunner has pointed it close enough to the lead militiaman to cut him down in a second, but not so close as to be an obvious insult. He fancies himself a romantic, and that foolish notion has made him surprisingly adept at acting in delicate situations.

The BMP-3 itself is painted a drab green, save for a crest halfway along the side, and a piece of art on the nose. It’s pin-up in the classic sense, depicting a woman running forwards, a rifle held in her left hand while her right beckons backwards towards unseen comrades, a position that deliberately leaves her chest tantalisingly visible through her mostly unbuttoned shirt. It’s a picture of me, done by a rifleman who fancied himself an artist before his girlfriend discovered just what sort of ‘art’ he was making, and the resulting disaster drove him into the comforting arms of the army. I can’t bring myself to have it painted over, just like I can’t order the nose art removed from the four lead BMP’s in each platoon.

Those ones aren’t of me, mercifully. Instead they depict Alexandria, the Three Blasphemies, Narwhal and the Siberian, each in a similar state of undress. That was Corporal – now Sergeant – Marinov’s idea; naming the platoons after the four most dangerous female capes, excluding Rukavitsa, of course. It’s supposed to be an homage to their commander – to me – to place me above the four, but not even my men would dare place me over Russia’s prodigal daughter.

There are arguments that could be made that there are other, more dangerous capes – Dragon, for one, or Black Kaze – but there were other qualifiers that influenced their decision. Beauty was the other factor, as is to be expected with men like this, and Dragon and Black Kaze don’t have a skin-tight costume, or no clothing at all in the Siberian’s case. No amount of respect can stop the filthy mind of a soldier when it is focused on a target.

The checkpoint commander is easy to spot – he’s the only one wearing a full set of uniform – and even if he wasn’t, then that expression of self-satisfied arrogance would mark him out anywhere. He speaks to me in Serbian, a language I have never learnt. Ledovskoy never learned it either, though he is fluent in Dari from his time in Afghanistan. There are, however, eight men in my company who do know Serbian. Some learnt it as part of their career, while others are simply Serbian recruits.

“Your papers,” the commander demands. The rank slide on his shoulder tells me he is a mere corporal, and yet he’s talking down to me. I don’t know if it is because I am a woman, because we are mercenaries, or simply because he is a bastard. Either way, I feel a flash of irritation in my mind, one that is amplified by Ledovskoy and my guards and the BMP crew until it’s spread throughout the whole Company like a plague. I quiet their nerves, stamping down on our irritation, and step forwards. The Serb is at least a foot taller than me, but standing at the head of a mechanised infantry company lends a certain height to my diminutive stature.

“On whose authority are you demanding our papers?” Ledovskoy asks. I can’t bring myself to talk to this bastard.

He sneers at me – he actually fucking sneers at _me_ – and I feel the gunner’s hand twitch behind his autocannon as he fantasises about cutting the corporal down in a hail of autocannon shells.

“On the authority of General Pavle Petrović.”

“Is that so,” my company Sergeant asks, in the same tone he used to take with recruits who were feigning sickness. “Tell me, yokel, what do you see on the side of our vehicle?”

He scowls, looking me dead in the eye before replying.

“I see a woman with her tits hanging out.”

He doubles over, as Ledovskoy’s fist slams into his chest. Before his men so much as have the chance to think, they’re staring down three barrels as my guards raise their rifles, and the autocannon swivels on its mount to point at this pathetic excuse for a militia. I still haven’t moved. My rifle is still slung over my shoulder, and my cigarette is still in my mouth. I just watch, dispassionately, as Ledowskoy starts to kick at the corporal.

“What you see, yokel, is a simple symbol. An armoured gantlet, closed into a fist. We aren’t your shitty local army, or some impotent UN unit who aren’t even allowed to shoot back. We’re the Red Gauntlet, son, and we’re here to help your worthless little cause for as long as your money keeps coming.”

He hauls the corporal to his feet before delivering another withering punch to his gut.

“We’re here to save you, corporal, so why don’t you show a little respect? There’s an officer standing in front of you, and we both know what that means.”

Winded and bleeding from a cut lip, the militia corporal scowls for a brief moment, before giving me a sloppy salute. I return the courtesy with a crisp parade-ground salute of my own, then retrieve a laminated document from my pocket and show it to the disrespectful NCO.

“Noosphere, Captain of Parahuman company three-four-seven-two of the Red Gauntlet. Travelling to reinforce the garrison, and acting on the orders of Tchaikovsky himself.”

The corporal pales, and almost trips in his haste to order his men to clear the buses off the road. The tension lowers, and I put the insignificant little man out of my mind, encouraging my company to do the same. I climb back into the BMP and sit myself down, as our convoy travels west into the city. The streets are old, and at times a little beautiful, but the signs of war are everywhere. The facades of many buildings have been covered by wooden planks or sandbags, and armed militiamen linger on every street corner. In spite of all this, the people of the city still go about their daily business. The shops are still open, and there are even public buses.

We move through it all, drawing stares from the crowd. Few of my company were naive enough to expect a hero’s welcome to the city, so none of us are surprised at the dispassionate concern of the locals. Some of them ignore us, trying to go about their daily lives as if there weren’t an army in the streets – as if there were no war at all. Others do acknowledge us, if only to stare. There are twelve vehicles in my convoy, each more heavily armed than anything the locals have seen in a while, and it has brought out their natural curiosity. I know how they all see us – the dogs of war – but I just can’t bring myself to care.

I bring my left hand up to the radio belted to my webbing, and speak to the platoon commanders.

“Alexandria platoon, turn off here. I want to get a look at the blue helmets. Everyone else, carry on to the barracks.”

There is no chorus of acknowledgements. There’s no need for one. The first platoon simply follows my vehicle as it turns off onto a different street, driving closer and closer to no man’s land before turning onto the road that runs parallel with the border. There’s fort built right along the line, an old school and a car park that have been ringed by fences, guard towers and great walls of concrete and stone. There’s a familiar blue flag flying in the centre of the compound, and we’re being watched by men wearing strange uniforms.

Both sides in this conflict are using much the same equipment, having either pilfered it from former Yugoslav stock or bought it wholesale from us. These UN troops are different, and it takes me a second to place their equipment. Private Bolshov – of Blasphemies platoon – once worked as a bodyguard in the West, before gambling debts drove him into our arms. He saw men like this in Stockholm, which makes them Swedes. They watch as we drive past, and I watch them watching us. They can’t do anything to stop us, not unless we break the ceasefire.

Someone steps up to the guard tower, a man wearing an absurdly tight outfit of red and white spandex. A cape, Swedish or not. Nobody in the company has ever seen him before. He could be a problem.

I’ve had my fill, so the platoon follows me back into ‘our’ territory, to the two blocks of flats that will serve as our barracks for the duration. The other three platoons have already parked their vehicles, and are slowly filing into one of the blocks under the watchful eyes of some local regulars. There are other Gauntlet soldiers mixed in amongst them, looking far less curious about our arrival. These must be those unfortunates tasked with beating some sense into the locals. I don’t envy them the task.

Alexandria platoon’s vehicles move to park up next to the others, but my driver brings me right to the front door, waiting for me to disembark before going to join the other armoured personnel carriers. The whole apartment building is empty, having been given over to Narwhal’s lieutenant by a sweaty Gauntlet sergeant, which means we get the run of the whole place. It’s been used as a barrack before, so a lot of the rooms are set up, and I manage to find a rather nice apartment that had clearly been used by a previous officer, as it still has all its original furniture. My bags are brought in, and I set myself up in the office that used to be a living room. Someone comes by with a permanent marker and writes my name on the door.

The day speeds by with the hustle and bustle of a new deployment. Men are assigned to their barrack rooms, and a communal mess hall is set up on the first floor by knocking through the walls of four apartments. I leave the building once, to greet the local commanders who I’m supposed to be working for, and the Red Gauntlet ‘advisors’ who have been pretty much calling the shots. None of them are capes – not in this backwater – but the Predictive Intelligence Staff is only a phone call away.

There’s not really a lot for me to do while the Company settles in. Things are moving at a level below me, directed by the lieutenants and the sergeants, and I don’t exactly need regular reports from them to know what’s going on. I’ll walk the barracks a little later, when my men are more settled into the new routine and my presence is less of a burden on them. Instead I drag my chair over to the window, and simply look out over the inner courtyard of the estate.

Now that we’re all indoors, the rush of activity has passed, and things have gone back to normal. I can see a platoon of locals returning from a run, watched over by a Red Gauntlet physical training instructor and shadowed by a technical, in case things go wrong on their run. This is supposed to be the frontline, but we’re still stuck training these half-starved idiots. Or rather, the wider Gauntlet is. My company is supposed to here to reinforce the locals, but it’s clear we’re the tip of a very rotten spear. Clearly Tchaikovsky wants someone in this brigade who’ll actually count in a fight.

On the floor below me, Siberian platoon’s sentry stiffens as a man approaches the gate, dressed in the uniform of a Gauntlet captain and with the personalised patch of one of the Parahuman companies on his shoulder. It’s one of the few concessions the Gauntlet allows to its capes. We’re all egotistical bastards, powers tend to do that to a person, and that tends to conflict with the natural inclination an army wants from its soldiers. So, they cave on a few individual touches in favour of keeping a cohesive whole.

It means cape names, but uniforms rather than those stupid American costumes. Not that I wouldn’t look good in spandex, if the half-baked urges of the newest in my company – the ones who haven’t yet grown entirely accustomed to the noosphere – are any judge. It also means creating a distinct identity around the Parahuman companies, separate from the regular structure of the brigades and battalions. We get assigned to specific commanders, but we can just as easily be sent somewhere else. It keeps us separate from the human soldiers, an unfortunate necessity when dealing with capes.

The most obvious distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’, between the soldiers assigned to the Parahuman companies and those who aspire to become the former, is in the patches on our right shoulder, unique to each individual cape and his or her unit. Mine depicts a human brain, ringed by concentric circles amidst a spider’s web. The Captain’s patch bears a domed energy shield being struck by artillery fire. No doubt it is as personal to him as mine is to me.

My sentry salutes the captain, and I get a good look at his face. He’s old, in the way that only someone who was promoted from the ranks can look old. Likely he was already a soldier before gaining his powers, though it’s not polite to pry into such things. He returns the salute with his right hand, and my sentry’s eye is drawn to the glass bottle in his left.

“Good afternoon, private,” he begins, in an easy-going tone that could be the product of carelessness or apathy, “I have a little welcoming gift for your Captain. Would you be so kind as to let her know that Redoubt is here to see her?”

He hesitates for only a second before I signal my assent, giving the Captain a few short directions before returning to his post. It would be a security risk to let him wander the barracks unobserved, if I couldn’t clearly see his progress each time he passes one of my men. To his credit, he doesn’t dither, instead coming straight to the door of my requisitioned apartment and knocking smartly.

“Enter.”

He steps through the door, and I shake his hand as he introduces myself, before eyeing his gift as he hands the bottle over to me. It’s a good drink, expensive, and difficult to find this far from Russia. It will suffice. I invite him over to the couches, and set down a couple of glasses, making the traditional three toasts. One to Rukavitsa, one to the Gauntlet, and one to soldiers in general. With that tradition observed, a second glass is poured, and Redoubt begins to speak.

“When I heard that they were sending another Parahuman, I decided that I simply must see them for myself. It’s been miserable being here, with only the locals for company.”

I smirk a little; he’s not exactly the picture of the diplomatic liaison officer.

“Are there many local capes?”

He snorts dismissively.

“Of course. All of them idiots, with one brain cell to rub between them. They fucking hate me.”

“And the other side?”

“They have capes too, probably just as useless. They don’t have us, though, and that’s what’ll make the difference. Let’s see their cause protect them from the Red Gauntlet.”

There’s something bitter in his eyes.

“You don’t think much of them, do you?”

“What, and you do?” I can’t help but smirk. “I thought not. I fought for a cause, once, but it didn’t stick. You know, I’ve been with the Gauntlet since the beginning. Ever since they started recruiting after Eritrea, and took a quarter of the fucking army with them. We were sick of causes, but you never really stop being a soldier.”

It’s nothing I haven’t heard before. Soldiers are naturally whimsical, prone to the same level of deep philosophical thought that most men find at the bottom of a bottle. Add in a little more drink, and they become philosophers to rival even the greatest of Thinkers. Redoubt has the classic look of a true warrior-poet, his eyes staring off into the middle distance while his hand clutches a glass of strong drink. All he’s missing is a rifle at his side.

“So…” he continues, once he’s dragged himself back from whatever realisation was occupying him, “Tchaikovsky sent you here? Did you meet him?”

I take a sip from my own glass and shake my head.

“No. I only ever dealt with one of his aides, and that was over the radio.”

“Shit,” he swears quietly into his glass.

“Something the matter?”

“I was hoping you might have seen him, maybe give me an idea of his mood.”

My eyes narrow. If Tchaikovsky is a basket case, I’d prefer to hear about it sooner rather than later.

“Is that something I need to be concerned about? His mood?”

He sighs, pouring himself another deep glass of clear liquid.

“Tchaikovsky has been my commander for thirteen years now, and I’ve been a cape for nine of them. In all that time, I’ve met him in person seventeen times, and spoken to him over the phone perhaps twice as often. He… he doesn’t see people. We’re just pieces on the board to him.”

I can’t help the smirk from appearing on my face.

“Spoken like every soldier about every general in history. He has to look at the bigger picture. It’s the burden of command.”

He scowls into his drink, seeming to hunch in on himself.

“I should have figured that _you_ wouldn’t understand. Even the most cold-hearted of generals will still walk amongst the wounded, will still occasionally think of his men as people. Tchaikovsky doesn’t. His world is one of angles and sums, and he doesn’t care one bit about the human cost so long as everything adds up in the end.”

This is getting dangerously close to insubordination.

“If you hate him so much, then why haven’t you put in for a transfer?”

He actually starts to laugh, a sharp sound with a bitter edge. It lets me smell the alcohol on his breath, far stronger than the amount we’ve drunk would merit.

“You think I haven’t tried? Tchaikovsky likes me, that’s the real fucking problem. He says we have ‘good power synergy,’ though how the fuck we’re supposed to ‘synergise’ when he’s a hundred miles behind the frontline is beyond me. He wants me here, so here I must stay. Doesn’t matter what I think about it.”

There’s some truth to what he’s saying. Things are a little different for the best capes, the ones who don’t need human soldiers to make up for their shortcomings. They get the best funding, state of the art equipment and the better paying contracts. They even get a little more leeway when it comes to their uniform, though nowhere near the same level as those strutting peacocks in the West. Men like Tchaikovsky are as far above us as we are above normal humans.

“So, you stay here and drink away the day? Like some sort of warrior-poet?”

“All soldiers are poets,” his eyes snap back down, meeting my own gaze with a penetrating stare. “We see things that other people do not, things that we weren’t meant to see and cannot really understand. Tell me, Noosphere, have you seen war?”

“My company fought in the Bazhanov rising, on the streets of Moscow.”

“That was not war. All you had to do was march out of your barracks, shoot at a bunch of dickless students and old radicals trying to recreate nineteen seventeen, then go back to a cup of tea in the officers mess, served with a slice of lemon in a glass mug.”

He’s drunk, and he’s rambling. I don’t need my power to know that nothing I can say will slow down his rants, so I just sit still and let it wash over me.

“You want to know war? Drive ten miles outside this fucking city and go share a hole in the woods with the real soldiers. Go to the places without running water, where men hide in the ruins of old towns like a second Stalingrad. You’ve been sent here because you’re fresh, because you’ll do what Tchaikovsky says and charge into battle without a second thought.”

His fire seems to leave him, and he sinks back.

“Think about it. You’re a mechanised company, and this is urban warfare. You’re not here to hold the line, you’re here to launch an offensive.”

I shake my head, taking a sip of his expensive vodka. At least he isn’t a cheap drinker…

“Maybe you’re right and the truce is about to collapse, maybe Tchaikovsky is just reinforcing this position in response to the strategic situation, to build a defence in depth, or maybe I’m here because of some other reason neither of us have thought of. In the end, it doesn’t matter because – no matter what you think – we _are_ soldiers. We will do our duty, and we’ll do it well.”

He doesn’t reply. He just takes one last drink and leaves the room, pausing at the threshold for some parting words of drunken wisdom.

“Keep the bottle. You’ll need it.”

What a generous gift. An imported bottle of Vodka that’s three-quarters empty.

I watch him as he leaves the building, then look out of my window with my own eyes as he crosses the small square to his own converted tenement block, the only other one here with Red Gauntlet soldiers guarding it. I certainly hope the training staff here are of better quality than the capes, otherwise I won’t be able to trust these locals to have my back. Not that I’d trust them even if they’d been trained by Rukavitsa herself.

The conversation with Redoubt has eaten up my time, and the Company is now entirely settled in. Time, then, to meet with my officers, and sort out the petty logistics of garrison life. I reach out with my power, touching the minds of my four platoon commanders. It is enough to make them aware of my location, and convey a simple notion through vague emotional keys. There are no true telepaths – except the Simurgh – but I am, perhaps, the next best thing. I know their senses, their skills and their emotions, and that is enough to gain a picture of their mind and their heart.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this for a while now. Think of it as an itch I wanted to scratch. It won't be long, probably one or two more parts at most, but it is somewhat of a secondary project, something I'm taking on if and when I get the chance.


End file.
